Refutation of All Heresies 9.16.4

Authorship disputed: The work names no author. Book 1 was long printed among Origen's works as the Philosophumena; after books 4–10 were found in a manuscript from Mount Athos (published 1851), it was assigned to Hippolytus, the usual view today, though some scholars ascribe it to another Roman writer of the same circle. Books 2 and 3 are lost, and book 4 lacks its beginning.

Greek text · Duncker–Schneidewin, 468

Ἀλλὰ καὶ τὴν τρίτην σαββάτου φυλάσσεσθε μὴ κατάρχεσθαι, ἐπειδὴ πάλιν πληρουμένων τριῶν ἐτῶν Τραϊανοῦ Καίσαρος, ἀφότε ὑπέταξεν ἑαυτοῦ τῇ ἐξουσίᾳ τοὺς Πάρθους, [ὅτε ἐπληρώθη τρία ἔτη] ἀγρίζεται ὁ πόλεμος μεταξὺ τῶν ἀγγέλων τῆς ἀσεβείας τῶν ἄρκτων· διὰ τοῦτο ταράσσονται πᾶσαι βασιλεῖαι τῆς ἀσεβείας.

English · Claude translation

But also beware of beginning anything on the third day of the week, since again, when three years of Trajan Caesar are completed from the time he subjected the Parthians to his own power, [when three years were completed,] war breaks out fiercely among the angels of impiety of the north; for this reason all the kingdoms of impiety are in turmoil.”

About this passage

Source

Duncker–Schneidewin, 468 · Ludwig Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, eds., S. Hippolyti episcopi et martyris Refutationis omnium haeresium librorum decem quae supersunt (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1859); section divisions from Paul Wendland, ed., Hippolytus Werke 3: Refutatio omnium haeresium, GCS 26 (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1916) · Greek text: L. Duncker and F. G. Schneidewin, Refutationis omnium haeresium (Göttingen, 1859), digitized by the Perseus Digital Library; section divisions from P. Wendland (GCS 26, 1916), digitized by the First Thousand Years of Greek project (Open Greek and Latin); both CC BY-SA 4.0

Text

As printed in Duncker–Schneidewin. Manuscript variants and the editor's apparatus are not reproduced; no textual problem is noted in this passage.

Translation

Claude translation (claude-opus-5-5), 2026-09-27 · Translated by Claude from the Greek text of Duncker–Schneidewin; made independently of existing English translations.

Compare

Ante-Nicene Fathers, vol. 5 (1886) (an older public-domain English translation, whole volume at CCEL; checked against ours only after ours was made) · Its chapter numbers differ from the standard (Wendland) numbering used here.

Topics

Heresy

Notes

Translation notes

Trajan's Parthian campaign was in 114–116. The bracketed words repeat the phrase and are probably a gloss.

Notes on the original text

Digital text corrected (wrong accent: τοὺς): τοῦς Πάρθους → τοὺς Πάρθους.

Cite this passage

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.16.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/16/4/).

The SBL abbreviation for this work has not been checked yet.

Plain text

Hippolytus, Haer. 9.16.4 (trans. Sophia Scriptura, https://sophiascriptura.com/fathers/hippolytus-refutatio/9/16/4/).